Icelandic Album Too Sexy For Facebook - The Reykjavik Grapevine

Weekly Newsletter

Icelandic Album Too Sexy For Facebook

An Icelandic musician advertising his latest single on Facebook was promptly banned, as the cover art features a naked man.DV reports that Ólafur Ragnarsson, also known as Ólafur í Hvarfi, recently released a new single, “It’s the Human Condition”. This single comes with cover art by Wafaa Bilal, an assistant professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
When Ólafur decided to give away the single, for free, through Facebook’s advertising system, he ran into an unpleasant surprise: an advertising ban.
“I received a notice from Facebook that I was banned from advertising the song, because the covert art was too sexual. [The cover] is about as non-sexual as it gets,” he said in part. “I can understand people getting upset about porn or violence or some other abuse [on Facebook]. But I think this is just over the line. This has an effect on artistic expression in general.”
In correspondence with the Grapevine, Ólafur added, “I am very frustrated by the ‘big brother’ tendencies of [F]acebook. This is a clear attack on artistic freedom and in general simply impossible to understand.”
Interested readers can download the single themselves from Ólafur’s Bandcamp page.

What is the Reykjavik Grapevine?

Your essential guide to life, travel and entertainment in Iceland.
Iceland's biggest and most widely read tourist publication. Delivers comprehensive content on all of the main topics of discourse in Iceland at each time: in cultural life, politics or general social affairs. A grand, continuously updated database of Iceland's main restaurants, clubs, cafes, shops, museums, tours and tourist attractions as well as a thorough events listing